"The galleys were protected on both sides by bulwarks, planted so thick with guns and cross-bows, that the quarrels and the gonstons (gunstones) came together as thick as hailstones. For all this the admiral boarded the galley that Preyer John was in and Charran the Spaniard with him and sixteen others. By advice of the admiral and Charran they had cast anchor into [word illegible] of the French galley, and fastened the cable to the capstan that if any of the galleys had been on fire they might have veered the cable, and fallen off; but the French hewed asunder the cable, or some of our mariners let it slip. And so they left this [word illegible] in the hands of his enemies. There was a mariner wounded in eighteen places who by adventure recovered unto the buoy of the galley so that the galley's boat took him up. He said he saw my Lord-Admiral thrust against the rails of the galley with marris pikes. Charran's boy tells a like tale, for when his master and the admiral had entered, Charran sent him for his hand gun which before he could deliver the one galley was gone off from the other, and he saw my Lord-Admiral waving his hands and crying to the galleys, 'Come aboard again, come aboard again,' which when my Lord saw they could not, he took his whistle from about his neck, wrapped it together and threw it into the sea." So died Sir Edward Howard, deeply lamented. "For there was never nobleman so ill lost as he was, that was of so great courage, and had so many virtues, and that ruled so great an army so well as he did, and kept so good order and true justice." Sir Edward was the first of the short list of our admirals who died in battle, and it may be said that he was the last knight in the old sense of the word--that is to say, a valiant man of his person, thinking more of the point of honour than of beating an enemy by good management--who commanded an English fleet. Although it has been the custom to speak of the valour of this attempt as honourable to the whole force engaged, the truth seems to be that Sir Edward Howard was not well supported. This small English galley in which he boarded the Frenchman appears in sober fact, to have been seized with a panic. No sooner had the knights and gentlemen leapt on to the Frenchman's deck than their mariners left them to shift for themselves. Nor was it only the sailors who were somewhat deficient in spirit. Sir Edward Echyngham reports that "Sir Henry Shirborne and Sir William Sidney boarded Prior John's galley, but being left alone, and thinking the admiral safe, returned." These two, though brave men, satisfied themselves hastily of the safety of their leader, and it is not easy to understand how they could have failed to see his peril, considering that the whole body was crowded on the narrow space of a galley's deck.